Mental Disease Peculiar to Certain Cultures: A Survey of Comparative Psychiatry.

Modern psychiatry is developed in Western Europe, but actually it is dealing with the behaviors of human, therefore a universal diagnosis for different culture may not be suitable.

Moreover, what is the meaning of normal? “Normal concept” may be very difficult to define, someone’s action is normal in a culture context maybe abnormal in the other.

Someone departs from the average, differ from the ideal is usually considered abnormal.

Therefore it would be an error to suppose that if a certain form of behavior in some culture or other resembles insane behavior it is necessarily abnormal.

The example given in the article is the distinction between insanity and genius, both condition is depart from the average.

In some genius initially his idea or thinking maybe considered insanity but later due to scientific proved to be great findings and finally being considered genius. The boundary between the two is only a line.

Mental disease particular to certain cultures for example being possession by the ghost was accepted well in the past was not acceptable under the definition of medical diagnosis terms.

But this kind of phenomenon is very common in Chinese society and also in other traditional society, where we do not consider them disease.

Culture difference is really very important when making diagnosis and therefore being a culture competent medical care professional should be in our education and training process.

But the question is culture competence can be improved by training? I also have doubt about this.

I think important diagnostic criteria when confirm whether a condition is disease is whether the patient’s social and daily function is influenced by the abnormal condition is the most important determinant factor. I

f he can adopt and coping well with the abnormal condition he should not be consider diseased.

延伸閱讀

觀察職場內的人際互動情形(三)